TW[gobble]3

November 21st, 2007

That Was The Week That Was … chock full of emergencies and odd bits, the usual chaos and dysfunction … and — silly me — I’d so much rather have Sandra Day O’Connor, who reportedly stepped down as Supreme to care for her ailing husband, sitting on the bench than sitting by as “understanding caregiver.”

In other news, the Dubby has pardoned two turkeys, “May” and “Flower,” who will, to echo the oddness of our culture, be escorted to a plane and end up as guests of honor at Disneyworld. Me, I’m a dedicated carnivore and Thanksgiving turkey is a big favorite, so I’m trying to manage my guilt in light of this article with accompanying horrific videos. I just can’t get excited about a sculpted Tofurky — but there has to be a better way.

In the Pea Patch, turkeys roam free and accessible … but they’re elusive and wiry, lean and mean and look and taste nothing like a Butterball — think of it as eating a marathon runner. Ben Franklin thought the turkey quick-witted and regal enough to be the national bird; well, we wouldn’t eat an eagle, would we … but then you never know what hormone’s and manipulations might produce a great eagle burger.

On that confusing note, my best to each of you [and yours] this Thanksgiving — I give thanks this year for your continuing friendship and interest. As today is Gracie’s sixth birthday, tomorrow is Turkey Day for 30+ and this weekend is my birthday, I’m leaving news collecting in your capable hands ’til next week.

Blessed Be,

Jude

HARPERS WEEKLY REVIEW

At the third OPEC summit in 47 years, held in Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said that
the price of crude oil could reach $200 a barrel. “The
basis of all aggression,” said Chavez, “is oil.” During a
private meeting that was accidentally televised, the oil
minister of Venezuela suggested to the oil minister of
Iran that OPEC stop using the crippled dollar for pricing;
the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia countered that public
discussion of the weak dollar would cause U.S. currency to
lose value. “Kill the cable!” shouted a security guard as
he ran into the meeting room, “Kill the cable!” An
economist with financial services firm UBS AG put the odds
of a U.S. recession at 45 percent. Iran was still
enriching uranium, and alleged Al Qaeda treasurer
Abdelhamid Sadaoui was killed in Tizi Ouzou by the
Algerian army. Cyclone Sidr killed 3,000 Bangladeshis even
though the cyclone’s fury was dampened by mango forests
near the coast, and ships carrying at least 2,000 tons of
oil and 6,000 tons of sulfur sank in a storm in the
straits between the Black Sea and the Azov Sea, killing at
least three sailors and 30,000 birds. U.S. Deputy
Secretary of State John Negroponte called on President
General Pervez Musharraf to end emergency rule in
Pakistan. “Emergency rule,” said Negroponte, the
ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, “is not
compatible with free, fair and credible elections.” A fire
at a gas pipeline south of Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killed
28 people, and 96 Sudanese died of Rift Valley Fever.

Former minister Amon Paul Carlock, also known as Klutzo
the Clown, who was arrested after photos of naked Filipino
orphans were found on his laptop, died in a Springfield,
Illinois, prison after he was Tasered by a corrections
officer. Monkeys rampaged in New Delhi, injuring 25 people
and chewing on a baby’s leg, and Oregon scientists claimed
to have cloned a rhesus macaque embryo. An Iceland firm,
deCODE Genetics, announced that it would offer personal
gene profiling, as did Los Angeles-based 23andMe, which is
backed by Google. Included in the $999 profile offered by
23andMe is an estimate of how closely one is related to
historical figures and celebrities like Jimmy
Buffett. Amazon introduced a wireless device designed to
replace books. It was reported that Blake Miller, the
“Marlboro Marine” made famous when a photo of him smoking
in Fallujah was widely published, now suffers from
post-traumatic stress disorder and lives in a trailer
behind his father’s house with a dog named Mudbone tied in
the yard. Miller, unable to discuss certain things that
happened in Fallujah (saying only that “to kill the snake,
we had to cut off its head”), is recently divorced and
remains a heavy smoker. Mr. Whipple died.

Former San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds was
indicted on charges of perjury and obstructing justice for
lying about steroid use. Chinese pork provider Pengcheng
held a public pig-carcass-shaving to demonstrate that its
meat would be sanitary and safe to eat at next year’s
Olympic Games; rival meat purveyors Qianxihe Group were
raising special organic-fed Olympic pigs that are treated
with traditional herbal medicines and given two hours of
exercise each day. A Japanese whaling fleet, trailed by a
Greenpeace vessel, was under sail with orders to kill
1,000 whales, including 50 humpbacks. A man in rural
Tennessee was accused of raping his teenage daughters,
whom he controlled with wireless electric-shock dog
collars; an Atlanta wrestler named Hardbody Harrison, who
calls his fists “The Pork Chop” and “The Biscuit Cutter,”
was on trial for keeping nine women as sex slaves; and a
Washington man was arrested after he beat his girlfriend
for giving him a wet willie. British scientists working
with negative index metamaterials said that they were
developing a technique that could someday be used to
capture a rainbow. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip
celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary, and it was
announced that former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day
O’Connor’s husband of 55 years, who suffers from
Alzheimer’s disease, was in a romantic relationship with
another woman; O’Connor reportedly was happy to visit the
new couple as they sat on a porch swing holding hands. “A
broken heart,” explained a brain imaging research
scientist, “looks different in somebody old.”

– Paul Ford
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/11/WeeklyReview2007-11-20

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves